The One Where Gale Lives
by TrenchcoatsAreSexy
Summary: Jesse confronts Gale, but his nerve is fading. Slash.


The One Where Gale Lives

(Kind Of)

**Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, the wonderful Vince Gilligan does! I earn no money from this, but I live for reviews.**

**Warning: Sex and violence up ahead; this story is rather disturbing. Do NOT read if you are easily upset… **

The door opens. Jesse could do it, when he wasn't looking at him, but now his trigger finger is shaking hard and he can't keep it steady. Everything is in painfully slow motion.

He hadn't wanted to look in his eyes. He knew he can't do it then. But if he doesn't, they'll kill Mr. White… Why is that man so goddamned important to him? A man who, the only compliment he'd ever paid him was that his meth was as good as his? Why had that meant so much to him? Why had those words alit something in him? The man who had written on every test – "apply yourself".

Somehow Jesse suspects that at the time, this hadn't been the kind of "apply yourself" that Mr. White had meant.

"Take whatever you want… I have money… I've got a LOT of money…Don't do this. You don't, you don't… You don't have to do this…" Gale begs. His eyes are wide… frightened, and Jesse can see inside them, see the reflection of the barrel looming before him. Jesse realizes that Gale's life must be flashing before those eyes, those deep brown eyes… so innocent, and so naïve.

Jesse is about to lose his own naivety as he takes Gale's forever. Gale won't have to live with this scene forever, but Jesse will. Gale will die innocent, a paschal sacrifice to pay for Mr. White's sins, and for Jesse's.

He tries to justify it, but he can't. He is not – there has to be a different way… maybe Mr. White was thinking too quickly, too rashly, too… something. Jesse is going to fail, he can't…

He lowers the barrel, expecting Gale to grab it from Jesse and turn it on him; it is what Jesse likes to think he'd do himself, in all his imagined bravado.

Instead, Gale simply takes a step back, his eyes still pleading, as words seem to emerge from him slowly, staggeringly, haltingly.

"I know you," he says. These words are quiet; his voice is barely above a whisper, as if speaking too loudly will compel Jesse into rekindling the flame, into gripping the trigger again and ending this, ending _him_. "You were…" He pauses, uneasy. "Are… were…" He corrects and goes back on it slowly, as if not sure which is right anymore. "Walter's assistant. He replaced me with you… and then…" He trails off.

"I don't want to do this," Jesse's voice admits, but it's as if it is someone else speaking, someone outside himself and instead of himself, some poor asshole that he's watching on TV and yelling at on his couch.

"Then why are you?" Gale's words would have seemed confrontational if they had been spoken by any other tongue but his. But this isn't Mr. White's tongue, lashing out, or even Jane's, being prettily defiant. The question is asked with deference, with wonder, even a frightened curiosity. He desperately wants, maybe needs, to know what propels this desperate man to point a gun at his head even though he protests that he does not want to.

"I need to. If I don't kill you, they'll kill Mr. White," Jesse explains quietly, more to himself. He knows the rationale, but can he go through with it now, shoot this man with this rationalization that stinks of the dismissive "it's not you, it's me" and "it's nothing personal" of a teenage break-up instead of the life-or-death scenario into which the two men have so recklessly been thrust?

"Mr. White," Gale echoes back, "Walter."

"Yeah. Walter. Whatever," Jesse responds, equal parts defeated and annoyed. It'll always be "Mr. White" to him; he will forever be his teacher even if Jesse hates to admit it with all of his energy and every mortared brick of his wall. He needs this man, and he doesn't even know why. It is not something that can be easily placed into words – Mr. White would doubtless try to boil it down to a chemical equation and he would doubtless fail.

"I don't want someone to get killed because of me," Gale ventures, swallowing, though his voice is gaining some, now that maybe it seems like Jesse can be talked down. "What did I do?" Gale's eyes are innocuously confused, utterly unprepared.

"Gus wants you to learn the formula," Jesse replies bluntly, "So that he can kill Mr. White and I… And put you in our places." Gale stares, and Jesse can see the pieces being pulled together, glued and sewn, in his eyes; a quiet, horrified gasp follows. "You see where I'm at, Gale?" His voice is desperate and so is the ill-advised use of the man's name; it makes him more human and this more impossible. He knows what he has to do but he cannot do it.

"Does," Gale pauses and picks up Jesse's title for Walter; maybe he finds it more appropriate as he, too, was always desperate for Walt as a mentor and beggaring for his approval, "Mr. White have a family?"

"Yes," Jesse replies, but does not elaborate. He knows better by now, after Emilio, after… all of that, all those things he doesn't want to think about.

"Do you?" Gale presses quietly.

Jesse hesitates; he does not how to answer. In the past year, the closest thing he can count to family is Mr. White… Unless he thinks of Jane, or even now of Andrea – of Brock, who reminds him of Jake… of the little brother he's been forced to abandon only partially due to his own bad choices but more so to the fact that no choice he makes now could please his parents.

When he answers, "Yes," he's not sure if he spoke aloud or just thought the word. Jesse has never felt so second-guessed, so filtered, in his life. He must have spoken aloud, for Gale nods.

"I understand," he says, and places his hands in his pockets. He hasn't moved from his spot a few paces back from the door, and Jesse realizes he hasn't moved from his space outside the door, either.

"In a rational sense, then, I should be the one to go." Gale's voice is removed, as if he is trying not to grasp the situation, like he is trying to weigh it out in logical terms with numbers and equations. "But from an… emotional," his voice hitches before he reels it in, "standpoint, there are so many things I haven't done." Jesse wants to breathe out the question: _like what?_, but Gale answers anyway. "Like have a family…" There's a dry chuckle, so unlike Gale as little as Jesse knows of him, more reminiscent of Mr. White. "Even…" he stops the sentences before he begins. Jesse cocks an eyebrow, inappropriately, hysterically amused.

"You've never…?" he asks, and Gale turns and nods. "So, like, chicks or dudes?" Jesse tries to lapse into his usual casual speech, with faltering trouble. "You seem like the kind of guy who's into dudes." Gale simply chuckles again, and Jesse hates the sound, wants to get on with it. "I could help you with it." Jesse doesn't know what makes him blurt this proposition, or what makes Gale agree; it's utterly surreal and as Jesse takes a step forward and leans into Gale, it's Jane before him and he closes his eyes to keep her there. Gale doesn't smell like her – he smells like chemicals and tea leaves – but he can imagine Jane's scent too, lavender soap and fruity perfume. Her voice is still fresh in his mind, even though he can't call her voicemail any longer. "Jane," he wants to whisper, but doesn't, just keeps his eyes closed as behind the lids the skin turns to Jane's and then, unwillingly, to Andrea's; he opens them and it's Andrea's brown eyes he sees in Gale's, in Jane's face that he sees in the midst of his necessary fiction.

Somehow, shirts come off and pants are unbuttoned, and Jesse murmurs something about needing lube, loud enough for Gale to hear but not loud enough to register to himself, because in his head it's still Jane he's touching, though the illusion is getting harder and harder to keep up because Gale is wide where Jane was slim, a short tuft of hair instead of long black locks, but his lips are strangely soft and Jesse is having much less trouble with this than he assumes he would have if he thinks about it logically. He doesn't think about it logically, though, and he needs release and to be released and when Gale returns with a bottle, Jesse doesn't even read the label before he's somehow on Gale's bed, with the other man face down so he doesn't have to look into his eyes.

"This might hurt," he warns almost gently before he thrusts in, hears the other man moan out in not quite pleasure, nor pain, but more like surprise. He doesn't know whether the surprise is good or bad and doesn't stop to ask, figures Gale will tell him to stop if he wants to.

He's not in control of his body, he's outside himself and it's someone else who is reaching around to grip the other man's cock between his palms, rubbing it and hearing appreciative murmurs and moans on Gale's end.

He feels the pressure building and bubble over as he groans, but pauses only a moment before he lets go with one hand and reaches over to the night-stand where he must have placed the gun.

He hears Gale whisper out, "I'm gonna…" and he must know, some part of him must know as just at the moment, Jesse puts the gun to the back of his head and pulls the trigger, watching the blood spatter on to his chest in slow motion, like a Pollack painting, so many shades of red, dark and light and bright and all he can smell is metal –

Jesse's eyes open first, before he stops dreaming; he can still see the blood behind his eyes before he realizes he has blood on his face, on his shoulders and on his neck. It takes him a moment to recall the fight, recall where the blood came from as his stomach turns. He rolls off the bed in a shaky motion as his fingers brush against the sheets, feeling a spot of dampness.

Soon, he will be going to Mexico. Maybe to die. Mr. White doesn't care – no, that's a lie. Jesse knows he cares. But he'd expected Mr. White to save him.

And no one can save Jesse now.


End file.
